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RhinoGames

joined Sep 15, 2013

Rhino Games is a small independent game development studio located in Kazan, Russia.

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Interview for Igrotop.com

Apr 17 2016 RhinoGames Blog

The original interview is available on the igrotop.com.

Darya Guseva: Good afternoon! Well, you can be congratulated with the release of The Lords of The Earth Flame on Steam Greenlight and with the opening of the campaign on IndieGoGo. And the first question: why exactly IndieGoGo, and not, for example, Boomstarter?
Rhino Games: Thanks! A campaign on IndieGoGo – it’s rather a pen test, than a real hope that everything works out and we collect the claimed $5000. Why exactly IndieGoGo? I think that the experience of placing and supporting a campaign on IndieGoGo will be more valuable for our team. There was another option with placing the game at Kickstarter, but it seemed to me that the release on IndieGoGo will be easier.

D: Honestly, I don’t remember releases of text quests in recent years, and the time of such games has long gone. Don’t you think that because of it the game will be popular only in a very narrow range of players?
R: Yes, it is. This type of games cannot be called popular one. I do not cherish the illusions of wide popularity of our game, and that’s not the goal. The goal is to release a good game with good story for the players, which are in the loop. And maybe some newbies will come, that are imbued with the idea and the spirit of the text adventure… Personally, I think that now there is the lack of such games, where you can, on the one side, to relax and rest, and on the other, the fascinating story attracts players to monitor for the duration of the game and won’t let you go until you finish it. And don’t forget that there is many endings in the game, so you can pass it again, adjusting your decisions.

D: Where did you get the idea to create The Lords of The Earth Flame?
R: It’s our author Arthur. His fertile imagination and a good knowing of Russian language made the game from the idea. In addition, everybody in our team feels certain nostalgia for suck games, so his idea was supported unanimously. The result can be seen in Steam.

D: The visual component of The Lords of The Earth Flame is a kind of book. At least it’s seems at first glance. As I understand, you want to create your project that looks just like that?
R: Yes, exactly. This book, ancient book. How and why it came to a player – behind the scenes and this is not so important. The player opens the book, and before his eyes opens a fascinating, and sometimes even creepy story in which every decision, every choice can affect the further development of the story. And from the very beginning it is not clear how it ends. With the interface of the game we want to convey the atmosphere that takes player away when he reads the real, “paper” adventure novel, flipping through the frayed by time pages, touching the story.

D: Why as a game setting you have chosen the Middle Ages?
R: The choice was predetermined by storyline. Exactly in Europe during the Middle Ages there is some sort of a mystery: witches, wars, alchemists, who are looking for the philosopher’s stone – all this terribly fascinates us and puts us into a fantasy world.

D: Special attention in The Lords of The Earth Flame deserves drawings on the pages of the book. Who is their author, if not secret?
R: We have great artists! It may seem that the graphics are very simple and primitive, black-and-white colored, but it’s not. Make stylized ancient engravings cannot be done by every artist. It’s important to grasp the balance of quality, modern techniques and a certain primitivism, nativity of medieval figures. There are 2 artists working on the game – Vasiliy and Catherine. Vasiliy did all concepts and general graphics and Catherine drawn miniatures in engraving style.

D: The project is planned to be translated into several languages. At this moment page in Greenlight says about five planned languages. Considering, that The Lords of The Earth Flame has so many texts, translating something like that is not the easiest job to do. At your disposal, probably a dozen of translators, right?
R: Claimed support of five languages – our maximum plan! We have a very good translator in English, good translators in German and French. Spanish translation is not so good, but we hope that we will also make this translation with high quality. Actually, the translation process is divided into three stages. First – the translation itself, second stage – proofreading by a native speaker and refinement, the third stage – the final adjustment of the text.

D: “Book” interface of the game clearly disposes to release The Lords of The Earth Flame on mobile platforms. Are there any plans like this in the future?
R: Yes, and this will no matter, will the game be successful in Steam or not. Mobile version of “Lords” we are planning to release in early summer, in June.

D: If successful, The Lords of The Earth Flame will be whether to develop their ideas in further branches or sequels?
R: Of course, now there’s a material for a sequel and prequel of the game. We already have quite well planned lore and even ambitious plan to do non-text RPG in the “Lords” universe.

D: Well, thank you for your time! I wish you to release The Lords of The Earth Flame in Steam as soon as possible!
R: Thank you! I hope that our game will appeal to the fans of this undeservedly forgotten genre.

Interview for IGC

Apr 16 2016 RhinoGames Blog

The original interview is available on the Vk.com.

Good afternoon. Tell us briefly the story of The Lords of The Earth Flame?
Hello! The game takes place in a fictional world, which is reminds in stylistics the European Middle Ages. In the story, you are the main character – a mercenary, a ranger, an adventurer. Your task is to lead caravan to the neighboring town through the mountains. It turns out that blizzard catches the caravan on its way, and you decide to take cover in a cave. This is where all the fun begins.

How the idea of creating of such game did came out?
All of us (game developers) used to play in these games, and we all have a certain lack of such text and graphic adventures. For the most part, game is designed for hardcore player who are knows this type of games. On the other hand, it would be very interesting to bring some new players to this genre, someone who never played such games. Time will tell, do we need these games right now or not.

How many people took to create this creation and what’s the role of each one?
From a technical point of view, the project is quite simple. However, the whole point of the game is not in the code and super effects, but in the text and graphic components that helps to immerse you into the world, to feel the atmosphere of the game. The main credit for this, of course, the story of the author Arthur and the artists: Vasiliy and Catherine. I do code. The important for the passing of atmospheric plays music. We ordered it, and seems to have found a great composer.

The Lords of The Earth Flame is the debut game of your team?
No. We have a fairly extensive experience in developing application and games for mobile devices (iOS and Android), as well as in an outsourcing team. With the “Lords” we decided to depart from the usual scheme of work and get on Steam under our own name. It will be a kind of test before the next big project, release of which is planned for the end of 2016.

What inspired you team when you created this game? Books, movies, and maybe, even music?
Oh…There is all pretty easy and difficult at the same time. We’re all pretty hardcore players, every one of us played such games some time ago. Rather, it’s them, as well as a love of adventure novels and light fantasy are our sources of inspiration.

At Greenlight you wrote that the game will be “more than five endings”. Each of them will be a happy ending?
In fact, there are more of them and not all of them players will like. It’s like in real life, tomorrow may depend on the little things that you did, or didn’t yesterday. Taking any decision in game, the player has to understand, that this choice can and will affect all further game.

We know that the game will be ported to mobile devices. When, approximately, it will be released?
Yes, that’s right. The game will be on iOS and Android. The code is written in Corona SDK (no, not Unity) and porting to the mobile devices doesn’t take much time. Even if the game won’t be successful in Steam, we still will release it on mobile store. It will be in June.

Is there any site, community or any other recourse in which gamer will be able to track the development of the game?
There are two groups in social networks, in which I post information about the game:
[Facebook community]
[VK community]
[There is a page on IndieDB]

We also have a campaign on IndieGoGo – it’s more like experience than a dream, that we will collect the money.

There is plenty of subscribers in INDIE GAMES CHANNEL who are making, or want to make a game. What advise can you give to them?
For those, who is already making games – do not give up! I had a lot of failures, but it only pushed me to move forward. Approach reasonably your powers and abilities, take only possible tasks. Who wants to enter the world of game developing – don’t be afraid, try, think, invent!

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